Email keeps evolving despite naysayers’ warnings that it is going away. Every year email continues to be ranked as an important tool marketers turn to for communicating with prospects and customers. Email marketing progresses as more data points, technology and insights provide a deeper understanding that marketers can channel into their strategies.

With over 2.8 billion people worldwide using email as a digital communications tool, it’s worth marketers’ time to stay on top of the latest trends. Both small and large businesses report positive ROI with each of their email dollars bringing in an average return of $44. This is why email beats out every other platform in turns of performance over the past years.

Clearly, there is a tremendous opportunity for companies to increase their profits through an effective implementation of email. To keep it as a top performer companies have wised up with regards to volume, resisting the temptation to inundate customers with too frequent blasts, and prioritizing privacy by being sure to gain customer’s permission before sending messages.

Now moving forward companies need to focus on getting the right message to the right consumer at the right time. Email needs to enhance the overall customer experience by being tailored to consumers’ needs, interests, and habits. Here are five tips to makeover your email marketing campaigns to successfully attract and retain customers:

Optimize for Mobile

Just like many other marketing tools, optimizing for mobile is critical to the success of your email campaigns. According to Fluent’s The Inbox Report, Consumer Perceptions of Email, about 60 percent of people check their email on the go and 75 percent say they use their smartphone most often to check their email. Every year the stats further show more people viewing email on their phones compared to their computers. The good thing is tech companies will help you with your mobile efforts. This year Google announced it plans to expand its Accelerated Mobile Pages open source library to include simplified web code that allows for email interactive features such as fillable forms and rotating carousels of images. Salesforce also announced a program innovation that allows developers to design customizable widgets like video players and weather feeds that marketers can then simply drag and drop into emails.

Segment & Automate

Automation is key to achieving scale. Marketers need the ability to target groups of prospects and customers meeting certain criteria without being constrained by their systems. Companies need to segment and filter customers based on their habits, demographics, interests, and recent activity. Automation then makes more data actionable and allows for emails to reach specific consumer groups with relevant information. It also saves you time by automatically sending follow-up emails with additional pertinent messages to easily continue your lead generation efforts.

Personalize

According to Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer report, 52 percent of consumers state they are likely to switch brands if a company doesn’t make an effort to personalize communications to them. Essential personalization such as dropping in a customer’s name in an email many companies are doing today. Moving beyond that means using your data to get more relevant offers and information in front of your customers with reward discounts, coupons that expire, enewsletters covering specific topics, etc.

Use Social Coordination

Email marketing should be coordinated with other forms of online advertising such as social posts and banner ads. This can help companies avoid overwhelming customers by following them too closely with their retargeting efforts. It’s also a smart tactic to utilize the strength of each channel like getting email signups through social media to build reliable audiences who will continue to be accessible to disseminate further information to.

Try Interactive Features

New technologies are helping make emails more attractive to customers. Email programs today can support extensive style code and build messages that look good on old PCs and the latest smartphone. Businesses should consider if interactive features, such as fillable forms or quizzes can garner better open and conversion rates as well. Interactive emails offer a way to entice and engage audiences by gaining their interest and encouraging their involvement.

Building your 2019 email marketing strategy with these tips will help you achieve better results and save you time. If you’re ready to take your email campaigns to the next level, contact Modern Marketing Partners today.